Ex-Cop Mark Fuhrman Tapes Deposition Source Says Retired L.A. Detective Repeatedly Took The Fifth Amendment And Refused To Testify In O.J. Civil Lawsuit

Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman gave a videotaped deposition Monday in connection with the wrongful death lawsuit against O.J. Simpson, Fuhrman’s attorney said Monday.

“It was uneventful, it was courteous, it was professional and it was concluded,” said Sandpoint attorney Ford Elsaesser.

The deposition was given at the Carriage Inn at the Twin Lakes Village golf course north of Rathdrum.

Elsaesser declined to comment on what was said in the deposition.

But a source close to the case told The Associated Press that Fuhrman repeatedly refused to answer questions.

“He took the Fifth on everything,” the source said. Fuhrman had been expected to invoke his right not to incriminate himself in the deposition; Fuhrman took the Fifth Amendment and didn’t answer questions when he was recalled to testify in the Simpson murder trial.

Monday’s deposition session was to start at 9 a.m. At 10:45 a.m., attorneys in the case called 1st District Court deputy clerk Kathleen Hutter to tell her the deposition had been completed.

“It must have been pretty short and sweet,” she said.

Hutter said the court has no knowledge of what occurred during the taping of the deposition. The court’s only role, she said, was issuing the February subpoena to force Fuhrman to testify.

As he left the deposition session, plaintiffs’ lawyer Edward Medvene said he regrets that Fuhrman had invoked the Fifth.

“We wished he would have testified because during all the time between his testimony and now, there’s never been any indication that anything he testified to about his investigation has been disproven,” Medvene said.

Any testimony could be used against Fuhrman in an investigation by the California attorney general’s office.

Prosecutors are looking into whether Fuhrman lied under oath in the Simpson criminal trial when he denied using racial epithets against blacks in the past decade. A tape recording of an interview with Fuhrman conducted by a screenwriter showed he had.

Fuhrman, who lives in a rural Bonner County home and works as an apprentice electrician, was subpoenaed by Simpson’s legal team in February in connection with Simpson’s civil trial in the killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Last October, Simpson was acquitted of murder in the June 12, 1994, killings.

Monday’s deposition had been scheduled to have been taken in March near Sandpoint. To avoid a swarm of media, attorneys postponed the session.

Hutter is secretary to District Judge James Michaud, who had placed a gag order on attorneys and had blocked out the date, time and place of the deposition session from documents.

Fuhrman is a now-retired homicide detective who became a key figure in Simpson’s murder trial last year. He said he had discovered a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate that matches one found near the victims’ slashed bodies.

But Simpson’s lawyers contended Fuhrman had a documented history of racism and may have planted the glove to frame their client.

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